Buy an iPad 2? My iPad 1 works just fine…

Image courtesy of Apple “Will you be buying an iPad 2?” has been the question of the day, well in my case the answer is a flat ‘no’.

The new iPads certainly look great and the Smart Covers are clearly a work of beauty but I have no need of a camera in my iPad and the speed boosts won’t really improve my uses for the device. None of which should be seen as bashing the iPad 2, rather it’s a testament of how much Apple got right with the first version.

Plus, after the hassle & delays I experienced getting my iPad delivered last year I’m really not in a rush to join another long queue.

If my needs do change and I suddenly find myself craving an updated iPad I think I’ll wait until you can walk into any store and pick one up there and then.

As always the sense of entitled some tech users feel has been quick to surface and within minutes of the press conference there were people taking to forums demanding to be able to exchange their old iPads for the new model.

On the official Apple forums there’s even someone who thinks the qualifying period for a such an exchange scheme should be backdated to last September!

It can be hard when your shiny gadget is no longer the latest model but the reality is, by the time your device hit the stores, the makers were already working on the next model (if not the one after that).

It’ll be interesting to see how the competition responds to the upgraded iPad, many seem to have been re-announcing and discussing the same iPad 1 competitors for months now without actually getting units into shops.

Are they too locked into designs to be able to compete with the newer model or are they destined to release devices which have a now discounted and soon to be discontinued model in their sights?

If they get it wrong the iPad will probably end the year being to tablets what the iPod is to portable music players…